


Corruption

by Natterina



Series: Soulmarked [3]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natterina/pseuds/Natterina
Summary: The pain exists from the moment Ienzo opens his eyes.Or, the soulmark AU where Demyx is a vessel of Xehanort.





	Corruption

**Author's Note:**

> As with Runaway, you won't need to have read the previous two in the series to get the gist of what is going on here: a white name = alive; black = dead; blue = in darkness. If you're an AkuRoku and Soriku fan, however, you might enjoy the other two.
> 
> I very nearly didn't include the last section of this fic, but ultimately I'm not that cruel!

The pain exists from the moment he opens his eyes.

All of them are confused and out of sorts; the alarms in the laboratory are blaring as loudly as they had the day the heartless had burst from their test cases and consumed them whole, and the tension in the air is thick and heavy, as it was that fateful day when Xehanort had opened the door in the basement and set free the chaos that had led to this whole mess.

Ienzo supposes he should be grateful he hasn't been put back into the body of a child.

But as they awaken, all five of them together at the same moment (but two are missing and the fifth of their number, Axel, shouldn't have even been in the lab when the heartless took over), the first thing they do is check their wrists. Dilan scoffs at the blackened scar before he rolls his sleeve down and leaves the room, used to the disappointment that would arise each time he looked at his wrist. Even and Aeleus react to their white names differently, with the former briskly ignoring it and the latter smiling softly at it before they too get up and leave the lab; Even looks kind of like he needs a stretcher, if Ienzo is honest.

It leaves Ienzo and Lea there, with Ienzo becoming increasingly aware of the sharp pain radiating from his wrist. The pain is one which is dull one moment and throbbing keenly the next with every beat of his heart, and with each little movement of his arm it begins to sting like alcohol on a fresh wound. Ienzo lifts his arm carefully, and nearly drops it to his side at the sight.

His Name, all four letters written in neatly though not in cursive, is a deep and vivid midnight blue.

This itself is not new: Ienzo had hit puberty fairly early, gaining his Soulmark at eleven years old, and the name had been white until one week before he met Demyx. The Name had turned a deep blue then, to denote that the owner of the Name and his supposed other half had lost themselves to the darkness. But Demyx had died, long after Zexion had left the world, and so the Name on Ienzo's wrist should be black.

Equally, Ienzo's wrist should not be a bloody and clotted bruise, with harsh lines of purple and black fanning out from the Name like a poison. It should not ache with the pain of a fresh bruise, one that has spread from the Name to halfway up his forearm and across the base of his palm.

Ienzo goes to touch it: the pain is immediate and nearly crippling, a sharp stabbing pain that Ienzo must try not to flinch at with every fiber of his being.

Whatever the hell had happened to Demyx, something much worse was happening to his Somebody.

* * *

Ienzo remembers when Demyx had arrived at the Organization.

He remembers their resident water nymph sitting before him in a chair, eyes dulled and expression lax as Zexion wrapped a thick ribbon around the Name on his wrist. That Demyx was nothing like the true Demyx who would emerge later, happy and eager to enjoy life.

Zexion had moved to wrap the white ribbon around his wrist with unusual gentleness, but he was a scientist by nature, curious at all things, and Zexion had not been able to resist looking at the Name.

He had nearly dropped Demyx's wrist in shock, when he came face to face with the gentle loops of the Name Ienzo. The 'I' was double looped, just as he would write it, and the 'Z' was written with a little flourish just as Ansem had taught him to, when he was young and wanted elegant handwriting.

Zexion did not drop the wrist, however, and Demyx had been too disconnected with his nobody to realise the brief hesitation that had come across Zexion. He simply sat there, as Zexion wrapped the little white ribbon around his wrist, before the slate haired boy tapped it with a finger: the ribbon blended in seamlessly with the tone of Demyx's skin, to hide it from the angry view of their Lord Superior.

That evening, Zexion had pulled off his own ribbon, unsurprised to find the Name on his wrist a deep and vibrant blue against his pale skin.

* * *

He dreams of his memories.

It is not unusual, Ienzo realises; a majority of them have been having dreams of their times as nobodies, even Lea, though the dreams have a much bitterer taste for the redhead. His dreams consist of evenings watching the sunset with Roxas, an unsettling yearning worming its way into his heart, and Ienzo knows that Lea lives everyday _wishing_ he had told Roxas that he had the younger boy’s Name on his wrist. There’s too much wasted time in Lea’s dreams, and the redhead usually takes it upon himself to head into the Castle from Merlin’s to make sure Ienzo suffers with him.

Ienzo never tells him that his own dreams are equally as bittersweet and full of regret.

He is dreaming now, of course. Ever since he came back as his somebody, Ienzo has retained his powers of illusion, and they seep their way into his dreams in the most elaborate of ways. His dreams are vivid and colourful, especially when they revolve around his memories as a nobody, and Ienzo wonders if the world was really that vivid or if his perspective has changed since regaining his heart.

That, or even he can’t recognise his own illusions anymore.

He’s in the library of the Castle that Never Was, some experiment of Vexen’s bubbling away on the table before him. The book in his hand is not his lexicon, but when he tries to look at the words they blur and move around on the page.

Definitely a memory dream, then, because he knows he was reading Vexen’s notes at the time.

The smell of a sea breeze enters his nostrils, a thick and heavy scent that he recognises immediately as belonging to Demyx. It smells salty and cold, like clothing that has been in the windy outdoors for far too long, mixed in with sea brine and sand. Zexion has been unable to smell anything _else_ since Demyx’s arrival.

It’s probably been three days since Demyx arrived at the Castle. His personality had changed drastically by this point; he was no longer that meek and quiet young man who sat in the chair before Ienzo and didn’t dare speak.

No, now he enters the library with a grin on his face. He’s latched onto Zexion in the few days since he arrived, usually coming in at least once every few hours. He walks funny, and Ienzo knows he had noticed this the first time around. Demyx walks as though he’s not quite sure where to place his feet but isn’t afraid to look silly whilst trying to figure that out. He looks like he’s trying to saunter in, but Zexion does not comment on it.

No matter how many times he relives his memories, Ienzo has also noticed that he cannot physically _change_ what happens. Zexion always acts and answers as he had done originally, no matter how much Ienzo bangs against the walls and tries to change it. It has led to some horrible nightmares that involve hands around his throat and a keyblade in his gut.

“Whatcha doing?”

Zexion places the book down on the table, words still jumping around the page, and looks up with a sigh.

“ _Working_. As I was three hours ago.”

A frown crosses over Demyx’s face. He’s regained his memories with startling clarity, and Zexion has already realised that he must have been _particularly_ energetic. He can pretend hyperactivity like nothing he has ever _seen_ before.

“Don’t you get bored?”

Zexion shakes his head, hair falling in front of his eyes briefly before he pushes it away. Long fingers go to push glasses he no longer needs back up his face, and his hesitation makes Demyx smile. He loses his concentration briefly, stumbling as he lets go of the bookshelf. Zexion shifts his legs under the table and kicks out a stool, which Demyx falls down to gratefully.

“I’d think your somebody was a baby giraffe, the way you’re walking. Are you sure you were human?”

Demyx’s smirk is _confident,_ and even without a heart it sets something alight in the empty space in Zexion’s chest. An uncomfortable warmth begins at his neck, even as Demyx remains unaware.

“Whoever told you I was _human_?”

Zexion stares at him, his expression blank but with his brows furrowed slightly, waiting for the laugh and the punchline, the smack on the thigh accompanied by a _I’m kidding_! It doesn’t come.

“Impossible.”

“Yeah well, I thought it impossible that the little heartless was wielding a trident, and look where it got me. Just _had_ to investigate.” Demyx grumbles under his breath, and Zexion narrows his eyes.

“Keep talking.”

And Demyx _does_. He spends the next hour chattering on about his life as his somebody, and Zexion even manages to get him to talk about the changes in his body and the difference in adapting to the human world. He would never, in a thousand years, ever expect to see _this_ amount of change in someone.

The next morning, when Demyx enters the library walking a little straighter, with his hand only brushing against the bookshelf, Zexion has the stool ready.

And it continues like that for what feels like _years_.

Ienzo awakens from the memory-dream with Lea’s hand on his shoulder; he has fallen asleep at his desk. Judging by the bag of sea-salt ice-cream and the dark circles under Lea’s eyes, Ienzo theorises that he’s not the only one who has had bittersweet dreams of remembrance this night.

They head to the top of the castle, to the highest parapet, and Ienzo leans back against the wall as Lea sits on the ledge, a pensive expression on his face. They stay there in silence as the sun rises, sea-salt ice-cream forgotten as they become lost in their separate thoughts. It melts and dribbles down their fingers, and Ienzo comes into awareness as it drips down the arm of his lab coat and sticks to his forearm and elbow.

Ienzo looks over at Lea: he sitting there, ice-cream a sad melted mess that is practically coating his hand and wrist, a scowl on his features as he looks at the colourful rays of the rising sun.

Ienzo knows that Lea never, ever watches the sunset.

* * *

The idea of Demyx as one of Xehanort’s vessels is one that Ienzo refuses to entertain for several months. All that he knows of Demyx totals to a strong nobody, with a will to survive and retain himself that was much stronger than most of those in the Organization.

He cannot entertain the idea that the Melodious Nocturne, who hid his talent and raw power beneath a faked half-assed attitude and an exaggerated clumsiness, would have been reincarnated with a weak-enough will that Xehanort would have been able to take over.

And so Ienzo spends the months after Riku returns with Master Aqua from the Dark Realm combing databases whilst his research bubbles away, or whilst experiments that do not need him present are conducted.

This whole ‘having a heart’ business _sucks_. His concern builds with each day, unaffecting him and his work but present enough that he worries at his lips with his teeth when he isn’t paying attention. It feels like a vacuum has opened in his stomach; every search of a database for the name of Demyx’s somebody comes back empty, and even with what Demyx had told him of his life before he can find _nothing_ useful.

The number of Ienzo’s experiments increase as the slate-haired man tries desperately to occupy every moment of his free time in order to avoid sitting down and _thinking_ about it. His wrist is a mangled mess that Lea frequently comments on: the blue and purple bruise has spread, and no amount of healing magic is able to dull the pain. It feels as though he has taken a hammer and allowed Dilan to beat his arm with it, but they had scanned his wrist several times and found _no_ physical damage past his skin. The bruise spreads up from his wrist into his palm, stopping at the mid-point and halfway up his thumb. Ienzo has given up on the ribbon entirely, choosing instead to try to hide it with his magic.

The Name itself is nearly invisible, the bruising around it is so vivid and bright and painful.

Ienzo is in the laboratory, four months after Riku had returned from the Dark Realm with Master Aqua, and two months since Lea’s Name had burned into his wrist once more and led him to a revived Roxas, when the latter two come bursting in.

If anything, Ienzo is quite impressed with how he doesn’t even _flinch_. He’s spent too many years with Demyx barging into the library without so much as a knock that Lea and Roxas need to try harder if they’re intending to surprise him.

Equally, he knows they were on their way because of a tracer he has on their gummi ship, alongside the small device he attached to the engine to monitor environmental data. For _scientific reasons_ of course.

Roxas reaches his desk first, Lea not too far behind him, and places both hands on it in front of him to catch his breath. Lea doesn’t look as tired, and Ienzo surmises they’ve probably not _ran_ here at least.

“Ah, look what the cat dragged in.”

Roxas scowls before he straightens up, and the blond holds a hand out.

“Give me your wrist.”

“Not a chance, thirteen.” He says this mostly because it’s funny to see Roxas’ eyebrows furrow so drastically whenever Ienzo refers to him by his old number. Lea rolls his eyes, and Ienzo dutifully holds out his wrist. The spell cloaking the bruise falls away when Roxas’ fingers touch his skin, and the blond is surprisingly gentle with the painful limb.

Until he prods it, that is.

It feels infected, Ienzo knows. The skin does not feel smooth or easy to push against; instead it feels spongy and hard, and the skin is rough. Roxas briefly flinches, before he tries to find the Name. It is there, barely visible against the bruising, and Roxas runs a finger over it before he lets go.

“Do you mind explaining that?”

“It’s Demyx.” Roxas says it simply.

Ienzo’s demeanour changes immediately from couldn’t-give-a-damn to sitting at rapt attention, and Lea smirks as he steps closer.

“It ain’t good news, Ienzo.”

“The vessels.” Ienzo is not an emotional person, and so his concern does not translate across as he sits there stiffly. Lea and Roxas know it is there, however.

“Yeah. He’s one of them.”

Ienzo looks down at his desk, at several weeks’ worth of scattered papers and research notes and old books, and doesn’t move for a moment. When he does move, he reaches across the desk for a pen and some scraps of paper, and begins to write notes.

“You’re certain of this?”

If Lea finds it strange, he doesn’t miss a beat.

“Yeah man, his hood fell back and it was Demyx. Though, I could have figured that out anyway since he fucking soaked me to the _bones_.” He’s not sure how Lea manages to _quite_ pull off the look of a pissed off cat, but he does. Roxas smirks, before his expression turns serious again.

“It’s not just him. Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord, they’re vessels too. We don’t know who the others are though, but there’s definitely thirteen of them, and they’re fucking impossible to kill.”

Something in those words turns Ienzo’s blood to ice.

“You _killed_ one of them?”

Lea waves the words off with a flourish of his hand.

“Nah, don’t panic. Nearly had to kill one of them though. That damned kid Ventus took one look at Xemnas and _flipped_ his shit, nearly got himself killed. And Aqua looked like she’d had her heart ripped out, kept rubbing her wrist and muttering ‘Terra.’”

Ienzo pauses in his note writing, and ever so slowly he looks up at Lea.

“Xemnas has _Aqua_ on his left wrist.”

“You’re fucking shitting me.” Lea looks far from impressed. Ienzo shakes his head. “Well, that explains it then. Wait, no _it doesn’t_. What does that have to do with anything?”

“The missing Keyblade wielder. His body must be _gone_ , if Xehanort is Xemnas but Xemnas is _Terra_. You’re spending all your time trying to find Terra, but you won’t find his body until you kill Xemnas. I’m betting your Keyblade Master didn’t know that Xehanort was Xemnas when she came out of the Dark Realm. I’m willing to bet that she hadn’t seen Xemnas before.”

Lea looks at him for a moment or two, whilst Roxas stands there in contemplation. Ienzo won’t lie: he sort of wishes he were there when Ventus and Roxas met for the first time. It must have been an eerie experience, to meet someone who is your veritable _clone_.

Roxas breaks the silence.

“Yeah, we’re not dealing with that. Send that to Sora and Riku and let them deal with it. The important thing is, Demyx is alive, and we also kind of need some help and advice on how to defeat the vessels.”

Ienzo complies, notes forgotten. Things have just gotten infinitely more interesting.

* * *

Time goes on, as Sora and Riku push the fight forward when Sora finally passes his Mark of Mastery. It brings their total number of masters up to three, with Ventus and Roxas close on their heels, and Ienzo aids their fight with the help of a recovered but reluctant Even, and an incredibly patient Aeleus.

Ienzo doesn’t feel it, in the end.

He wakes up early on an uninteresting and unremarkable Wednesday morning, several pieces of research and computer simulations ready to be checked. His morning routine passes without anything suspicious going on, and Ienzo is halfway through towel-drying the water out of his hair when he notices.

The bruising is gone.

Ienzo stumbles down onto the edge of his bed, towel at his waist all but forgotten as he holds himself up with one arm and _stares_ at the other.

That vivid, brilliant purple bruise has disappeared. The skin is soft and pale, though his arm is far too skinny like the rest of him. Likewise, the pain has all but disappeared.

The Name is black.

He grips at it harshly, a feeling of dread settling in his stomach and spreading outwards through his blood. His heart feels as though it has dropped into his stomach, and Ienzo’s nails leave imprints in his skin as he pulls the skin taut.

The panic takes over him slowly. It begins with a small shake in his bones, as Ienzo struggles to his feet and forces himself to continue getting ready. It moves into him chewing his lip terribly as he refuses to even think of the possibility that Demyx has died.

Ienzo enters the lab as the panic and fear reaches a crescendo; his throat feels thick and dry, and swallowing is a difficult task that _hurts_. There are no tears in his eyes, but when Aeleus asks him to read out the results of one of their simulations, Ienzo finds his voice sticks in his throat and he physically _cannot_ speak without it hurting. He is tenser than he has ever been before, which is likely _why_ his throat is hurting, of all things, but his heart still feels like it is skipping beats.

Ienzo spends the morning unable to focus on the computer screen; he stares at reports without really reading them, thumbing at his wrist the entire time. He feels so _nauseous_ , he moves a bucket next to his desk just in case.

He moves to the giant old-fashioned chalk board by noon; they have kept it, for Ansem the Wise had always claimed that a good mathematician _needed_ a chalkboard rather than a whiteboard and pen. Ienzo is fairly sure his equations are wrong and practically gibberish, but Aeleus has never been much of a mathematician in comparison to Ienzo, and Even is too busy with his research project to pay attention.

Lea walks in at some time after noon. He is alone, his coat half-charred and a scabbed-over wound still visible on his forehead, and Ienzo is fairly certain there’s a crusty patch of blood under his ear, though it could be hair. And there, in his right hand-

The chalk in Ienzo’s fingers snaps against the board with the pressure.

“No.” Ienzo breathes it more than he says it, and Lea _almost_ looks gutted. They are not friends, never have been and likely never will be, not truly, but they have a respect for each other and this is not a task which Lea takes easily.

Aeleus has the foresight to usher Even out as he takes his leave, and Ienzo feels the brief pressure of a heavy hand on his shoulder before the other two men leave. Lea approaches slowly, holding the upper half of a snapped-off Sitar neck out with both hands.

“I’m sorry.”

There is something haunted in Lea’s expression, a guilt that goes beyond the simple delivery of a broken Sitar, and Ienzo _knows_ that Lea had delivered the killing blow. It cannot be easy for the redhead to deal with: Axel and Demyx had become fast friends, perhaps even faster than Demyx and Zexion, and if Lea _had_ dealt the killing blow then it will be something that will plague his nightmares for years.

“It wasn’t him.” Lea begins, as Ienzo takes the battered upper half of the blue and yellow wood, the strings snapped but still attached to the tuning pegs. The Nobody insignia on the top is still sharp, and Ienzo thinks he sees dried blood on the sharp points. “You know Demyx, he never used to fight with it, but the vessel did. It was his face, but it wasn’t _him_.”

Lea lets go of the remains of the Sitar as Ienzo holds it tightly, stick of chalk still in between his fingers.

“Thank you. For telling me.”

Lea nods once before he turns to leave, and Ienzo finds he cannot tear his eyes away from the splintered wood in his hands. It has been broken off just before the neck meets the body of the Sitar, and Ienzo knows to turn it over to find the clumsy _Demyx_ etched into the wood.

He stays there in the laboratory for hours, alone.

* * *

That night, Ienzo does not wait for his dreams to create his illusions. He consciously transforms his room around him, before he lets his memories take over.

There is a lot to their story that the others have never known of. The rest of the Organization had no way of knowing that Zexion kept his bed warm on evenings via the sleeping body of an exhausted Demyx, or that every time their lips touched they would feel an echo of what was, what _should_ have been. They could never know that the two would return from their rare missions together and wander the streets of the World that Never Was, a persistent drizzling rain falling down on them as it was Demyx’s favourite.

That’s where they are now, as Ienzo lets his memory play out. Demyx is before him, uncorrupted and _alive_ , but his smell has gone.

Ienzo realises he has forgotten how the other man _smells_.

But Demyx walks ahead as Zexion follows at a slower pace, his hood pulled up loosely as he tries to misdirect most of the water with his spells.

“Ugh, I don’t want to go _back_. I’m sick of missions!” Demyx whines as he hops over a drain and onto the curb, his face lit up by the bright neon lights of the city.

“Saix isn’t apt to take that well.”

“Yeah well, he won’t take it well that we didn’t reach our quota, either.”

Zexion pauses: Demyx has a good point, but neither of them have _ever_ cared about their quotas, and if Saix pairs them up knowing this then he has only himself to blame, really. Zexion sniffs defiantly.

“I have much more important things to be doing than chasing down heartless.”

Demyx frowns as he approaches a street light. He grabs it with one hand and uses his momentum to swing around it as Zexion approaches, and he stops in time to brush his lips against Zexion’s nose. The younger man bats him away with a scrunch of his face.

“Get off.”

“I know! We should just not go back!”

Zexion rolls his eyes and walks past Demyx, knowing the blond will follow.

“Fantastic idea, why didn’t I think of it first?”

But Demyx is nothing if not persistent, and Ienzo remembers this moment well. Demyx follows him close on his heels, though his longer legs mean that he overtakes Zexion quickly. He begins to walk backwards, eyes still on Zexion’s.

“No, I’m serious! Have you heard the rumours lately? Luxord says he saw a boy in Traverse Town running around with a _keyblade_ , and Axel says he saw a _different_ boy in Hollow Bastion with one. The Organization doesn’t even need us anymore!”

An echo of irritation and excitement stirs in Zexion’s chest as he considers Demyx’s words. Not the proposition to _flee_ , but the information on the keyblade.

“You wouldn’t get far before they found you.”

“I would if I was with you. _C’mon_ , they’d never think to look for us in somewhere like Atlantica.”

“ _No._ ”

“You’d be an attractive fish.”

Zexion ignores that in favour of continuing walking, and Ienzo knows that they will reach the Castle in mere minutes. The rest of that conversation had been useless filler, with no more mention of the insane plan to run off.

But Ienzo, he _wishes_ more than anything that he could change the outcome of this. As Zexion, he had only ever felt echoes of what he would have felt with a heart, but since becoming Ienzo again and regaining his heart his memories are wrought with emotion. He remembers this memory, and all others, with the emotions he should have felt at the time, and this is horribly bittersweet. This memory in particular is filled with an odd yearning, and he wishes he could reach out a hand and _take_ Demyx and _leave_. If he could, perhaps Demyx would not have become a vessel, and perhaps he would be still be _alive_.

If only.

Ienzo bundles up in his blankets as the illusion falls away, leaving him alone in his dark and small bedroom. There is no moon tonight, and Ienzo wishes for a pair of arms to hold him together as he forces himself to face the truth.

The broken half of the Sitar lays on the bed before him.

* * *

Life goes on, as it must.

The fight is not yet over, and Ienzo reminds himself of this as the days since Demyx’s death turn into weeks. Ienzo adopts his old tactic, of covering his Name with a white cloth and then enchanting it to blend with his skin: he has not looked at his wrist since that awful day.

They change tact, realising that they cannot take on the entire Organization when they do not have the seven keyblade wielders of light, and Sora puts forth the plan of going after Xemnas alone in order to regain Terra’s body. It takes weeks of some spectacular spy work on behalf of Riku and Ventus, with Ienzo and Aeleus working out the computer simulations and constituting the brains _behind_ the spy work, but they succeed in misdirecting the information the new Organization XIII are capable of receiving. It is Riku who returns one day with the precise locations where Xemnas is likely to be, and days later Sora and Riku return with a half-hopeful Aqua, a wide-eyed Ventus, and the empty shell of Terra.

Sora remembers the Lingering Will in the Keyblade Graveyard and heads off with Riku to retrieve it, and Aqua braves the trip to the Castle that Never Was with Ventus to find the chamber with her armour and Terra’s heart.

Both return weeks later, within days of each other in fact, and Ienzo finds himself feeling like some sort of glorified Doctor Frankenstein as he orchestrates Sora unlocking Terra’s heart. It goes smoothly, and _everyone_ leaves the room to allow for Aqua and Terra to have the reunion that thirteen years has denied them.

After so many days with a busy and full laboratory, Ienzo finds relief when the keyblade wielders leave to return to finishing off Xehanort. His lab is quiet and empty, for the rest of the apprentices have finished for the day, and he’s busy examining a test tube with his reading glasses on when the door opens.

Ienzo does not look up, keeping his eyes on the substance inside the tube and the beaker in his hand, but he _knows_ it is far later than is appropriate for visitors.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” He calls out, placing the beaker back on the table and adjusting the apparatus.

“Yeah? Well, I woke up with a tail and gills and realised I couldn’t use them anymore, so I swapped them for legs. Didn’t have anywhere else to go other than here, though.”

The words ring out through the laboratory calmly, though there is a distinctive lilt to the words that indicate they are spoken with a grin. Ienzo straightens immediately, exhaling in one heavy breath before he very calmly forces himself to put the test tube back. He will _not_ let himself hope.

He turns slowly, pulling his reading glasses off as he does so, and nearly drops them when he sees the man in the doorway.

It’s Demyx, or at least it’s his _somebody_. Ienzo looks up at him, then down at his wrist, and then back up at the slightly darker skinned, longer-haired man as he pulls at the ribbon on his wrist.

When he looks back down again, the Name is _white_.

He doesn’t _run_ to him: Ienzo may have a heart again, but emotional displays will never be his thing even if he does get too enthusiastic about scientific theories sometimes. Demyx, likewise, does not open his arms wide or swoop in for a kiss. He stands there, pearly white teeth showing as he grins, and Ienzo walks forwards and stops just in front of him.

“Perhaps I can give you the trade secrets of your greatest enemy, in exchange for a place to stay?” Demyx is grinning even as he speaks, and he lifts his wrist to show Ienzo the Name. It looks exactly as it did all those years ago, when a much younger Zexion had hurriedly tied a ribbon around it to hide it from view.

Ienzo chuckles, unable to believe it is _Demyx_ before him. He’s wearing clothes that he quite clearly has thrown together without a care for what they look like, but none of that _matters_ as he leans in and presses a firm kiss to Ienzo’s lips.

It’s glorious, that first kiss with a _heart_ in his chest. Ienzo feels his stomach flip even as his heartbeat speeds up, and the smell of the ocean fills his senses. Ienzo belatedly notices that they’re much closer in height than they used to be, but Demyx pulls away before the kiss can deepen and looks down at him with a hesitant grin.

“So, can I stay?”

Straightening his ascot, Ienzo nods.

“They had better be good secrets.”


End file.
